How important is it that /ifs retains its synthetic ACL stamp? Below is a directory I created and altered the permissions and the synthetic ACL stamp disappeared. I need to know if there is a way I can alter the directory/file permission without disturbing the synthetic ACL setting? That is if there is some importance in keeping it.

Synthetic ACLs become real ACLs when any permission activity happens in a Windows context. Even something as simple as removing everyone from a Synthetic ACL would trigger this. As long as you only work with the POSIX bits, it will stay synthetic.

If you need to back out and go to back to Synthetic ACLs you can use chmod -b on the cluster and it will "blow away" the ACL.